Rangers partner with Eleven Sports Media to provide fans with stats and social media at Ibrox

So many advantages to watching sport have come from digital media that it almost seems like staying at home is the only way to miss nothing.

Buying a ticket to the game deprives you of replays, stats, social media and expert analysis. Watching on your TV offers everything but the experience.

That stark reality has set off a whole host of ideas to counteract that. From installing super-fast wifi in stadiums to adding mini screens to each seat, fans are being tempted into stadiums in imaginative ways. It’s unprecedented, really. The sport used to be the draw by itself, but there’s no doubting that having access to the internet, social media and stats in the stadium itself is huge progress.

And that’s what Rangers FC are looking to provide for their fans next season. The Scottish club have partnered with Eleven Sports Media to add screens to the concourse areas of the stadium to create a StadiumTV network which will allow fans to “interact and keep up with matchday news”.

Crucially, the screens will also use StatZone technology to convert Opta data into stats graphics, allowing fans a greater insight into the game they’re watching live right in front of them, as well as the ‘StatTracker’ technology, which will “deliver branded visual StatCards to a social media audience to create content for Rangers national and international fan base.” These stats will then be shared on social media through the club’s official channels.

The development is the latest to try to tackle the problem of connectivity within football stadiums, allowing fans the chance to enrich their understanding of the game and interact with other fans. These sorts of things are easily to hand when watching from home, but in the stadium fans are on their own.

Clearly, clubs are thinking about how to change the experience so that going to the game doesn’t mean missing out on all the trappings that watching from home allows.

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